Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio
Carol Ferguson (left) and Jim Smith, both of Pennsylvania, have post-polio syndrome, which is a condition that includes new muscle weakness, joint pain and other issues decades after survivors were initially infected with the polio virus. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)
From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!
Jim Smith was only 2 years old when he suddenly became paralyzed from the neck down. It was 1945, and his parents immediately knew what was wrong: polio.
The viral disease had terrorized people for decades. Most people who were exposed had very mild symptoms that mimicked a common cold or the flu. Some never had any signs of illness at all.
But in serious cases, children and adults became bedridden with muscle weakness and paralysis, or even had to be placed in iron lung machines to help them breathe. Some died from the disease. Many survivors would later develop post-polio syndrome, a condition that involves new muscle weakness and pain decades after the initial infection.
It was a scary prospect, said Smith, now 82, as he sat in his wheelchair manning a table at a recent community health and disability fair in New Hope, Pa.
When he became paralyzed as a child, his parents rushed him from their home in Bristol to Philadelphia where all the hospitals were.
“And at that time, they were all full,” Smith said, so they were sent away.
Left to figure out his care on their own, Smith’s parents did everything they could, he said. They even engineered a sort of canvas stretcher that they used to lower his motionless body into steaming hot baths, multiple times a day, “to try to loosen the muscles.”
They adopted a physical therapy technique known as the Sister Kenny method, pioneered by an Australian nurse to stimulate the affected muscles, all in the hopes that their son would survive and regain movement.
It took about five months for Smith to recover, but he was left with permanent muscle weakness and partial paralysis in one leg.
“And you limped, they called you names,” said Carol Ferguson, a long-time friend and fellow polio survivor.
“Oh, yeah. ‘Limpy’ and some other ones,” Smith said. “But you develop your own way of ignoring the comments and just keep moving along.”
A game changer arrived in the spring of 1955, and eager parents started lining up their kids to receive a dose of a new polio vaccine, a much-anticipated weapon against this devastating and feared disease.
This week marks 70 years since the first polio vaccine was licensed on April 12, 1955, which kicked off mass vaccination campaigns that eventually helped eradicate the illness in the U.S. and many other countries.
Today, Smith, Ferguson and other polio survivors like John Nanni, of Delaware, spend a lot of time educating others about polio disease, the long-term complications of post-polio syndrome and the importance of polio vaccination.
The work is especially relevant today as childhood vaccinations have come under attack, Nanni said.
“Polio is not just an illness that you get over. It’s something that affects you your whole life,” he said. “For every child that we save from polio, we’re saving them from a life of pain and suffering.”
Nanni had paralytic polio when he was 10 months old in 1953. At the time, people still weren’t quite sure how the virus spread. He said families that were affected were treated like pariahs.
“We’d be walking down a street and people would literally cross the street to avoid coming in contact with us, because they didn’t know how long somebody was contagious with polio,” he said.
Nanni became ill just before clinical trial sites came to towns all across the country for a new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh.
The famous scientist’s son Peter Salk, the oldest of three boys, remembered that the whole family was involved in the trials.
“One day, my father came home from the laboratory with the batch of the experimental vaccine, needles, syringes, sterilizing them on the stove and lining us up,” he said.
After years of research and already millions of trial vaccinations in children, a breakthrough announcement was made on April 12, 1955.
“Basically, the vaccine was found to be safe and effective,” Peter said. “Even as I’m saying it now, I’m getting gooseflesh, because what did this mean to the people in this country who had been so terrified for their children for such a long period of time, not taking them to the movies, swimming pools? The relief that was felt was just tangible.”
Different kinds of polio vaccines followed Dr. Salk’s original creation, including Dr. Albert Sabin’s oral version containing weakened, live virus. By 1979, the U.S. had seen its last case of locally-acquired wild poliovirus infection and declared the disease eradicated nationwide.
Polio remains endemic in just two countries today: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Peter, who became a doctor and researcher himself and teaches as a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said it’s important to keep talking about the polio epidemic and the role of vaccines in ending it.
“People don’t have infectious disease on their minds so much because of vaccines that have protected their children starting very young,” Peter said. “So it’s easy to forget about, not think about, the importance of keeping ourselves in that situation where we are not being plagued by infectious diseases that can be prevented.”
Carol Ferguson carries that same message when she volunteers at community health events in Pennsylvania. She leads the Polio Network, an international nonprofit that provides information and resources about polio and post-polio syndrome.
“It’s all part of what we try and do is keep this history alive, make it real, help people understand that this is real,” she said. “But it’s hard. It’s really hard.”
Ferguson had a brief, mild case of polio in 1954. But she didn’t have any paralytic symptoms or serious effects, so doctors never made an official diagnosis.
Only decades later when she began tripping, falling, stumbling and having pain up and down her side did an expert finally make the connection between the virus and post-polio syndrome.
It’s a diagnosis that Ferguson, now 73, hopes many others are spared from, hopefully, she said, because they’re vaccinated.
“Polio is not one and done. And many of these viruses are not,” she said. “The long-term effects, it breaks my heart. And for us, one child getting this is painful.”
Nanni, now 71, was also diagnosed with post-polio syndrome about 20 years ago. He uses a wheelchair and does water therapy in efforts to preserve as much muscle strength as possible.
He volunteers much of his time with his local Rotary Club, an international service network that has pledged to end polio disease.
“You know, I have a saying, ‘Vaccines cause adults,’” Nanni said and smiled. “The key is vaccinations.”
Newer versions of Dr. Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine is still used today in the U.S. and abroad. Scientists and public health experts hope that polio will one day be eradicated from the world.
Get daily updates from WHYY News!
Sign up